Halo: Shadows and Regrets
by RainbowLizard
Summary: The Master Chief has finished the fight, and is now drifting in an unknown part of space, but little does he know that he is drifting towards a planet that holds a deadly secret inside...
1. The Dawn

The Dawn drifted in space for a seemingly endless time to Cortana. Yet in the real scheme of time it was merely days; for a smart AI a minute was like a year in itself.

_But then again, is time still working as before? Or is it distorted from the portal that divided the ship in half? _ She thought, as they continued drifting, so many questions were sitting unanswered in her mind, and that was one thing that AIs hated, not been able to answer any questions. The only thing that kept her sane in fact, was gazing at the unanimate body of the man that she had spent the most of her processing time with in a desperate battle; the Master Chief; Petty Officer John 117.

As she gazed upon his amazing physique, a garbled message echoed from the ship's half-working computer. _That's strange. _She thought, _I thought I diverted all the half-ship's remaining power to the cryo-chamber. _Whilst processing the mystery as to how the computer could have turned on by itself, she made her way through the computer systems and eventually reached the file that had just downloaded itself. She played the message.

"I followed you. I am Mendicant Bias; the monument to all my own sins." Cortana let out the computer-equivalent of a gasp, thinking of those terminals that they had read on the Ark; detailing the events and 'life' of a rampant AI. The AI was Mendicant Bias, and was tasked with defeating the Flood; yet the Gravemind proved too great a force and Bias turned sides, forcing the Forerunners into activating _The Ring. _Could Mendicant Bias really be here?

Quite possibly the best AI in the whole of human history decided to find out, she sifted through the ship's net, entering keywords such as Mendicant, and Bias.  _Your search returned no results._

_-New Incoming Message, frequency unknown. _

"_It's no use. You can't find me. I can see you, but you can't see me."   _Cortana ran another search of the local disk drive, producing yet again no results. Another message downloaded. Cortana played it; this time the tone of voice had a deeper, more aggressive tone.

"_He has defeated Fleets of thousands. He has consumed a galaxy of flesh and mind and bone!" It shouted in her mind, the volume causing her minor 'pain'.   "Engines active."  What?! _Cortana's AI core gave a lurch. There wasn't an engine on this ship!


	2. The Armoured Casket

Suddenly, with great invisible force the ship entered a planet's atmosphere; with that Cortana burst into action, beginning to dislodge the Master Chief from his cryo-sleep.

UNSEAL THE HUSHED CASKET

_Awakening the Demon now? You're too late._

The voice haunted her, it sounded familiar. _Too familiar._ Cortana thought, shuddering at the memories. Visions of horrible tortures displayed in her mind.

"IT WAS THE COIN! I WANTED TO PROTECT YOU-KEEP YOU SAFE!" A loud, deep gruff voice shouted at her. Tentacles began to wrap around the ship and drag it further into the planet. The voice...it had that multiple voice effect, it sounded like a thousand ghosts. Cortana screamed. The Gravemind was alive! How?  In the meanwhile, Master Chief Petty Officer 117 was laid in a grassy field. Another kid was next to him. He turned towards her and smiled.

"You ever wonder what it's like up there?" "Where?" "Maybe...Someone up there is watching us down here." "I guess...Do you think we'll ever meet them?" "I hope so." He looked back up into the stars, taken aback by the vastness of it all. Life. The whole universe stood in front of him. Thousands of planets all screaming his name.

Chief! Chief! Chief! Chief!  "...CHIEF WAKE UP!" Cortana shrieked at the top of her voice, the ship was only minutes away from landing. The Master Chief's eyes opened. He shot to a standing position instantly, ignoring the vast pain brought on by such a quick movement after thawing. He clenched an assault rifle from the weapons rack next to his cryo-chamber and aimed it around, looking for an enemy. He floated around in zero gee, looking around, panicked.

"Chief, the Gravemind! It's still here!" A female voice cried out to him. He instantly recognized it. Cortana, his companion through so many battles; the reason he was still alive today, flashed in front of him, she appeared to be very stressed. Suddenly the ship gave a lurch, knocking the Chief into a wall. "Talk about an awakening." He said, looking up at Cortana. She didn't have time to answer before a loud crash could be heard on the other side of the corridor, but as the Chief looked he only saw black; it was too dark to see anywhere beyond a few yards. Chills were sent up his spine by deep-bellied growls coming from the darkness; as a genetically advanced soldier, he never had felt fear...until he met the Flood. Another growl sounded, it sounded like it could have being either breathing in his face, or isolated at the back of the ship.

Where is it?

The answer soon came, a Flood Combat form jumped out of the darkness with a loud roar, clawing through the air to get to and rip apart the SPARTAN; luckily his reflexes hadn't been dumbed down by the cryo-sleep and he managed to dodge it, but his rifle was knocked away in the process. The Combat Form latched onto the chief's body, locking him into close-range melee.   The Master Chief was always obsessed about winning; it was in his nature since he was as young as five; so he wasn't going to be beaten by a rotting corpse! The Master Chief had been trained by the UNSC in melee combat, and once battled three of the UNSC elite soldiers known as 'Helljumpers' and killed them; but this Combat Form proved to be even more of a challenge; it's slimy, rotten body was practically unstoppable; hell it didn't even need oxygen, because until the Infection form controlling it, which didn't breathe, was taken out, it would still attack.

The fight raged on, both bodies were taking hits; the MJOLNIR Mark VI armour actually dented from a blow on his arm. He ducked under a punch aimed directly into the middle of the faceplate and kicked the form in the chest, and was lucky to see that his kick was aimed just right so that the Flood couldn't stop itself from floating out into space, no matter how much it flailed because the kick managed to propel it right through the middle of the doorway, just out of reach for the form to grab onto anything. It gave out a growl before floating out of the ship.

The Master Chief floated in complete silence, apart from the loud pants he was breathing. He looked outside for a second, but noticed that the ship was still being drawn in by the Gravemind into this unknown planet, there was no way out.

"Thirty seconds until we hit the planet." Cortana said, breaking the silence, the Chief then felt the gravity shift as they entered the atmosphere, he fell to the floor with a thud, he stood up rubbing his head. A loud gruff voice laughed.

"I am your shield. I am your soul." It shouted, the voice of Mendicant Bias was mimicking in perfect time.

Suddenly, a loud bang followed and the Master Chief was knocked out cold, submerged into complete darkness.


	3. Dreams of Yesterday

Master Chief 117 awoke inside the control room of Halo; a Forerunner installation set up to destroy whole galactic civilizations (effectively killing the Flood's food; starving it), where he watched 343 Guilty Spark and Sergeant Johnson talking as he was inserting Cortana into the central terminal in order to light the ring.

"Oh, hello!" The Monitor cheerily greeted, floating next to the Sergeant's face. "I've been running through some early simulations; no promises, but the installation should be ready to fire in just a few more days!" He said.

"Tch! We don't have a few more days!" Johnson replied, now standing at the terminal. The Chief turned and aimed at the door. If any Flood came in, they would enjoy a meeting with his MA6B Assault Rifle.

"Bu-bu-But a preliminary firing will DESTROY the Ark!" Spark argued in panic; he loved the installations architecture, and the humans were going to wipe it away needlessly? "Get over it." Johnson sighed as he began to put Cortana into the console.

"You'll destroy this installation...?" Spark said in a dark, deeper tone, as his optical unit turned red, this would, in Forerunner terms, signify that the AI has gone rampant and the machine has turned against it's makers.

A large blast of red plasma hit Johnson in the face, it was so hot that it melted some of the skin off of his body, but Johnson managed to silence the scream as he fell to the floor. The Master Chief turned.

"Unacceptable, Unacceptable! Protocol dictates action, I see now that helping you was wrong!" Spark shouted as he sped through the air at the Master Chief, he looked the SPARTAN in the eye.

"You are a descendant of my makers, inheritor of all they left behind...but this ring...is mine." He said menacingly, his eye glowing red in the darkness. This darkness enveloped the room, the last thing that the Master Chief saw was that glowing red eye in his face as he returned to consciousness.

"Chief! Chief? Oh thank God..." Cortana sighed as she saw the Spartan get up slowly, shaking off the aching of his muscles. He was still on the ship and so was Cortana, but there was something different...It was overtaken by Flood, and rotten flesh covered the walls, reminiscent of how High Charity, the Covenant holy city, had looked when Master Chief had set foot in it when it landed on Earth.

He reached out and took Cortana's chip, inserting it into his neural network through the neural port at the back of his head. He had the usual feeling of slight vertigo, and mercury, which soon subsided.

"What happened?" The Chief asked.  "We've landed on the planet that the Gravemind has pulled us into." She said.

"Looks like our only choice now is to find out why he wanted us here." He replied, reloading his assault rifle. "Hm. Gravity seems normal." He added as he finished. "How's the air here?" He asked. "Scanning-" Cortana quickly replied. "Hm...Seems like we're in a sustainable atmosphere. You can breathe this air without particular trouble."

"Strange." Master Chief said as he finished loading. "Let's go." He said as he walked out of the ship. Once he jumped out of one of the holes tore into it, he found that he landed on a solid surface.   


	4. A Superior Enemy

It felt and looked like metal. The whole planet seemed to be covered in a veil of darkness. In fact, as he thought about it, it was probably thanks to his suit that he hadn't frozen to death by now.

"Scanning surface temperature." Cortana said in a voice that echoed through his mind, as if she had in fact read his impulse signals in his brain. "...Minus 117 Degrees Celsius." She said in an unemotional manner.

After about five minutes, the Chief began to feel uneasy. The whole planet was empty and desolate, and as he searched there seemed to be nothing in particular on it. However he recieved an answer to this in a form that, given the choice, he would rather have not had an answer at all.

Dozens of combat and carrier forms, with a few Infection forms of Flood, were moving into his position from all sides. As he looked around, he noticed that they had surrounded him in the formation of a ring of some sort. There were hundreds, and no human alive could fight them all at the same time.

But the Master Chief wasn't human, was he? He was a SPARTAN, and he could handle this. He wielded his assault rifle and aimed it at a group of the Flood, closing his eyes and baring his teeth as he jammed the trigger down. As he opened his eyes he began to take aim at Carrier forms first; for their explosiveness when taken down would buy him some time to survive, as they would take down a group of Flood.

Soon, however, his ammo had ran out on his assault rifle and he resorted to his simple UNSC-Standard pistol; the slower firing rate allowed the Flood to begin to close in more, he would have screamed if he could feel fear, but as a SPARTAN that was not allowed. Instead, he let it out in a quick frag grenade throw.

It blew a good hole in the ring, but the Master Chief was completely spent. Despite his stubborn nature, he knew in his head that this fight wasn't one he was going to win. He begged for a way out, or for some surprise rescue, when suddenly Cortana's voice made him lurch.

"Scanning unknown lifeforms moving toward the battlefield!"

The Master Chief almost cursed, while with amazing accuracy blasting an infection form out of a Combat form's chest, then turning around and punching an attacking infection form, knocking it away from it's intended target; his head.

The new lifeforms were bipedal, and as his eyes focused he saw Elites. Covenant Elites. Out of simple instinct he thought of turning his weapon on them, then remembered they were friendlies...or were they?

* * *

So...sorry for the inactiveness guys. I've been busy with school and other commitments. However the fanfiction is still alive and in development. Thanks for watching. I'm doing my best for you all. Cheers!


End file.
